Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)

My Lords, I will focus on disorder in public places and spaces, which is having such a detrimental effect on our lives. In doing so, I will concentrate on Clauses 37 and 38, which create a new stand-alone offence of assault against a retail worker and build on the aggravated offence contained in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. I support the two new measures in the Bill: I want to see violence against someone doing their job dealt with seriously. No one should be subject to random attacks while at work, and I should declare that, as a vice-chair of the All-Party Group on Customer Service, I do not want people who care deeply about giving great customer service to leave their jobs, or to deter anyone from taking up this kind of employment, which is essential and valuable to us in so many ways. I will say more about how in a moment. First, however, the Institute of Customer Service tracking survey shows that violent abuse against all front-line service workers continues to rise. That means public transport workers, those who work in the hospitality trade, people who work in post offices and banks, delivery drivers and even utility engineers working on the streets. That is why the aggravated offence in the 2022 Act covers anyone, not just retail staff, providing a public-facing service or doing a public-facing job. I ask the Minister to say, when he comes to wind up, why the Bill’s stronger measures cover retail workers only. All the people who do these public-facing jobs matter, not just because we need the services they provide but because, more often than not, they are the responsible person in charge of public spaces and places, so they need not just protection but our support to uphold our common standards, which are so important to maintaining good order and a civil society. That means that we must show respect for the authority of their roles in public settings, whether their authority in such situations is formal or informal. We need to give the people who do these jobs the recognition they deserve so they discharge their responsibilities well. If we are to prevent violent criminal behaviour in public spaces becoming normalised, we must work together to tackle the low-level disorder and disrespect that we see on our streets, on public transport, in shops and elsewhere, which cause us to feel so despondent: litter dropping; feet on seats; watching videos or listening to music on our phones without headphones; queue-jumping; fare dodging; graffiti. Police presence on our streets is important. Rapid response from the police to actual crimes is vital, but we cannot keep creating new criminal offences and expect the police to deal with everything that has gone wrong in society. We as leaders, whether political, religious, business, public service or union, must use our authority to set, promote and honour the standards we know are vital for a healthy society, yet too often now treat as unimportant. I would support expanding Clauses 37 and 38 to more than just retail workers for the reasons I have given, but I ask all the businesses, unions and trade bodies, which understandably want more legal protection for their workers, to think about what I have said. Likewise, we as legislators must do more than the easy bit of making new laws, as my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier said. Tackling crime and disorder through better policing and stronger sentencing is important, but on its own it is not enough. We need to share and promote what the good citizens of this country want and expect from each other in our shared spaces. That is how we will create the right conditions for people to support each other and together make it harder for people to behave badly and do wrong.